aboutime
12-01-2017, 09:42 PM
https://www.politico.com/story/2017/12/01/congress-harassment-settlements-lawmakers-273896
Lawmakers have carte blanche to cut secret harassment settlements
The House Ethics Committee and other entities have no rules to prevent taxpayer-funded payoffs out of member office accounts.
By ELANA SCHOR and HEATHER CAYGLE 12/01/2017 05:04 AM EST
Jackie Speier is pictured. | POLITICO
The House ethics panel “currently has no clear position on whether these payments are indeed impermissible,” Rep. Jackie Speier told the committee’s leaders in a Thursday letter. | John Shinkle/POLITICO
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The revelation that Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) secretly settled a sexual harassment claim using his office funds obscured a disturbing fact: The House appears to have no clear rules on whether Conyers’ colleagues can do the same thing.
Conyers in 2015 made a severance payment of roughly $27,000 to a former aide who accused him of harassment using his taxpayer-funded office account. But even though the House ethics manual says that employees should be paid for having “regularly performed official duties” — in other words, showing up and doing work, a guideline that the severance payment to Conyers’ former aide didn’t meet — the settlement deal was still allowed to go forward.
Now Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a vocal advocate for reform of Capitol Hill’s secretive system for handling workplace harassment, is calling out the lack of policing of the secret one-off settlements. She wants the House ethics committee to state definitively whether the chamber will allow more Conyers-style settlements.
The ethics panel “currently has no clear position on whether these payments are indeed impermissible,” Speier told the committee’s leaders in a Thursday letter, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.
Allowing lawmakers use of their office’s budgets “to avoid public disclosure of wrongdoing only serves to enable the evasion of accountability,” Speier wrote, adding that she knows of one member who used a maneuver similar to Conyers' to settle a misconduct case earlier this year.
“The American people deserve to know whether their tax dollars are being used in this manner.”
The question of whether House members can settle harassment claims with their budgets — also known as members’ representational allowances, or MRAs — is at the heart of an ongoing ethics committee review of severance payments Rep. Mark Meadows (R-S.C.) made to a former chief of staff who was accused of sexual harassment by several female aides in the office.
Lawmakers have carte blanche to cut secret harassment settlements
The House Ethics Committee and other entities have no rules to prevent taxpayer-funded payoffs out of member office accounts.
By ELANA SCHOR and HEATHER CAYGLE 12/01/2017 05:04 AM EST
Jackie Speier is pictured. | POLITICO
The House ethics panel “currently has no clear position on whether these payments are indeed impermissible,” Rep. Jackie Speier told the committee’s leaders in a Thursday letter. | John Shinkle/POLITICO
Facebook Twitter Google + Email Comment Print
The revelation that Rep. John Conyers (D-Mich.) secretly settled a sexual harassment claim using his office funds obscured a disturbing fact: The House appears to have no clear rules on whether Conyers’ colleagues can do the same thing.
Conyers in 2015 made a severance payment of roughly $27,000 to a former aide who accused him of harassment using his taxpayer-funded office account. But even though the House ethics manual says that employees should be paid for having “regularly performed official duties” — in other words, showing up and doing work, a guideline that the severance payment to Conyers’ former aide didn’t meet — the settlement deal was still allowed to go forward.
Now Rep. Jackie Speier (D-Calif.), a vocal advocate for reform of Capitol Hill’s secretive system for handling workplace harassment, is calling out the lack of policing of the secret one-off settlements. She wants the House ethics committee to state definitively whether the chamber will allow more Conyers-style settlements.
The ethics panel “currently has no clear position on whether these payments are indeed impermissible,” Speier told the committee’s leaders in a Thursday letter, a copy of which was obtained by POLITICO.
Allowing lawmakers use of their office’s budgets “to avoid public disclosure of wrongdoing only serves to enable the evasion of accountability,” Speier wrote, adding that she knows of one member who used a maneuver similar to Conyers' to settle a misconduct case earlier this year.
“The American people deserve to know whether their tax dollars are being used in this manner.”
The question of whether House members can settle harassment claims with their budgets — also known as members’ representational allowances, or MRAs — is at the heart of an ongoing ethics committee review of severance payments Rep. Mark Meadows (R-S.C.) made to a former chief of staff who was accused of sexual harassment by several female aides in the office.